眺めつつ思ふに濡るる袂かな
いく夜かは見ん秋の夜の月
いく夜かは見ん秋の夜の月
- Roma-ji
-
Nagametsutsu omou ni nururu tamoto kana ikuyo ka wa mimu aki no yo no tsuki
- English Translation
-
Gazing at it still
the very thought wets my sleeve
and how many nights
more of it am I to see
the moon of an autumn night
- Meaning
- Gazing at it, the thought alone wets my sleeve: how many more nights am I to see the autumn moon?
- Commentary
-
Book Four Autumn Poems I 415
Headnote: as in the preceding poem, topic unknown.
Following the run on cloud and moon, this poem counts the nights that are left. The original gives no fresh headnote.
Inpumon-in no Taifu was a lady-in-waiting and poet in the service of Princess Ryoshi, a daughter of Emperor Go-Shirakawa, known as Inpumon-in. In Book One she is the poet of the seventy-third poem and in Book Two of the hundred and forty-third.
The time is a night in autumn; no place is given.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.
The second line of the text does not agree with the phonetic line given beside it; the reading of the text itself is followed here.
The verb in the first line means to gaze while lost in thought, with a continuative particle. It is the opening of Ietaka's three hundred and ninety-second poem.
The second line means: at the very thought of it. The particle marks cause.
The third line names the tears.
The particle in the fourth line is rhetorical: how many nights more? Not many. It is the form of Shune's hundred and forty-second poem in Book Two, which counted the springs still left to look at.
The poem closes on a noun, the ending recurrent through this book and here appearing for the fifth time.
- Author
- Inpumon-in no Taifu
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
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